In APS, definition, diagnosis, and evidence must not be conflated.
Definition concerns what life is:
Life is viability-oriented, constraint-closed organisation.
Diagnosis concerns how such organisation may be identified in particular systems. Relevant investigation can examine how a system maintains and re-establishes the conditions of its viability, including its responses to perturbation, vulnerability, and changing conditions. These observations do not themselves constitute the definition of life.
Evidence consists of observations that support or challenge an inference that the relevant organisation is present. Depending upon the system and question, such evidence may include endogenous repair, coordinated regulation, metabolic integration, adaptive reorganisation, and viability-oriented modulation of activity. None of these features defines life by itself.
APS therefore treats biological evidence not as a checklist of traits but as evidence bearing on claims about living organisation. A system may move without being alive, regulate without thereby satisfying the APS definition of life, or display complex behaviour without thereby demonstrating biological agency. Likewise, evidence of apparently viability-oriented activity must be interpreted in relation to the organisation of the system rather than treated as an independent definition of life.
Organised persistence poses a related but distinct explanatory problem: it denotes the continuity of living organisation through ongoing material and structural transformation. Evidence concerning repair, regulation, compensation, and reorganisation may therefore help investigate organised persistence without making organised persistence a second definition of life.
The evidential significance of any proposed indicator depends upon the claim being tested. APS terminology or conceptual architecture alone cannot establish that an observed process is diagnostic of life, biological agency, or explanatory superiority over an alternative account.
Key Point: Definition specifies the APS account of life; diagnosis concerns how the relevant organisation is identified; evidence bears on whether particular diagnostic or explanatory claims are supported. These roles must remain distinct.